Vodafone Hutchison Australia
chief executive
Bill Morrow
has released new mobile plans and called for an end to “corporate bullshit" as part of a drive to win back mobile customers and return to positive subscriber growth by the end of 2014.

Speaking at the launch in New Zealand’s Queenstown of Vodafone’s new Red postpaid mobile plans, Mr Morrow said the company would increase call allowances and change its marketing strategy to become more human in an effort to retain customers.

“You can get into all this pretence and corporate bullshit and we’re not going to do that," he said.

“We’re not going to send letters that are official with salutations . . . but something we’d send to a brother or sister or maybe a lover."

The new plans start at $65 a month for unlimited calls and text messages as well as 1.5 gigabytes of downloads.

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The relaunch of Vodafone’s plans comes on the back of continuing heavy losses at the telco. In July it revealed 551,000 users had left the network in the six months ended June 30.

Since mid-2011
Telstra
has gained 2.9 million mobile customers while
Optus
has increased its base by 433,000. In contrast, Vodafone has lost 1.2 million users.

Mr Morrow said Vodafone’s original goal for Australia was to stop losing customers and start winning them back from early 2014. “That’s still the official plan; however it could be sooner and we wish it to be sooner," he said.

But Citigroup analyst
Justin Diddams
said the plans would not be enough to change the mobile marketplace and Telstra’s dominance of the segment.

He predicted Vodafone would lose 250,000 customers by the end of 2013 and only gain 25,000 by the end of 2014.

“The plan constructs and the marketing campaign around it will struggle to have a material impact unless they can demonstrate the network is as good," he said. “I haven’t seen anything to show the network will be sufficiently differentiated for customers to move back to Vodafone’s network while they get similar value on other networks."